The British called our place THE
QUEEN OF THE HILLS- if our place was really the queen then her palace was
definitely the most beautiful of all. The lush green Hills, the crystal clear
air, the view of the majestic Kangchendzonga and her sister mountains, the very
amicable climate and the pure mountain springs rushing down the hills to rendezvous with
the mighty Himalayan rivers- all made these Hills a palace worthy of the mighty
Queen.
The high and mighty from across the globe made
this place their favoured destination- Kings, Queens, scholars, religious personalities
and royalty made a bee-line to obeisance
before the Queen.
Then like all good things and times, the romance of
the Queen with her countless lovers ended too- The romantic liaison that the
British had with the Queen ended with them being forced out of India in 1947.
The Queen was left behind like a ditched lover- sorrowful, dejected, unkempt
and neglected. The new Indian Nation neither had the resources nor the interest
to continue this romance.
The Queen was bored and lacked any form of entertainment
and hence turned to a few clowns in an effort to stay amused and entertained.
She had hoped that one of the clowns would one day mature and become King and
help, both her and her palace, regain its past glory. Her kingdom and her
subjects waited with abated breath waiting for this king to arrive but so innocent and
gullible were her subjects that they hadn’t even heard of this old Turkish
proverb which said- WHEN A
CLOWN ENTERS A PALACE, HE DOES NOT BECOME THE KING BUT RATHER THE PALACE
BECOMES A CIRCUS.
This is exactly the state that the Darjeeling
hills are at the moment.The Kings that we thought would lead us to the path of
progress and across the beautiful and bright horizon, actually turned out to be
Clowns in the guise of Political leaders, making this heaven on Earth a joke in
the eyes of the world.
The issue we have is very simple- we
in the Hills need a separate State of our own- keeping aside sentiments- we
want it so that we are responsible for our own future, so that we ourselves can
guild our coming generations into the path of progress and success, so that we
ourselves are in control of what we want without making a detour vide the deep,
dark, insensitive and often hostile corridors
of Nabanna. The issue is clear- we want a separate State of our own and
ideally there should be no confusion in this.
This fact has been understood by the
State and Central Governments very clearly. There is no confusion in their
minds on what we actually want. The general public in the Hills too have no
confusion on what it wants- it know that the thousands of lives that this place
sacrificed was only for the cause of a separate state- nothing more nothing
less- not for a DGHC or a GTA or a North Bengal State or a Simanchal Pradesh or
for merger with Sikkim or for Tribal status for the remaining Hill communities.
The sacrifice was solely for a separate State for ourselves.
Yet the Hills are in a confused state
of mind not because the State or Central Governments are confused or the public
is confused but because our clownish leaders are confused. So confused are they
that each different political grouping seems to be demanding different things-
some want North Bengal State, some advocate merger with Sikkim, some are demanding
6thSchedule status and another set demanding PPS- whatever that may
mean. It is hilarious to know that even those demanding PPS do not know what
PPS is. Isn’t this clownish? No wonder
our place as turned into a circus- just like the Turkish Proverb quoted above.
What needs to be analyzed is whether
many our leaders are born clowns or whether their clownish activities are a
part of a larger game. I am not inclined to believe that they are clowns by
nature but rather agencies working for the State and Central Governments have
used the power of green dough to make them act in this fashion.
Harry S.Truman, the 33rd
President of the United States of America, once said famously -“If you can't convince them, confuse them”.
Truman, by the way, was the US President who authorized the dropping of atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This
strategy of his - confusing the masses when one cannot convince them, has been
widely used by Politicians over the ages and I suspect that this is the precise
strategy that the Central and State Government agencies are using to dilute our
aspiration and demand.
So successful
has this strategy been that the so called leaders of the Hills are running
around in all directions like confused ants. Speaking of ants- like the
countless working ants that constitute an ant colony, our leaders too, are now
in countless numbers. Any person, who can go before a camera and speak a few
words, starts thinking of himself or herself, as a political leader. There is a
glut of Politicians in the Hills at the moment- each braying for the others
blood- all while the world laughs at us. It is always better to be ruled by one
Lion King than be ruled by a hundred clowns.
All this while
people like me and all other hardworking, innocent and sincere citizens of this
Queen of the Hills, desire nothing more than a separate state of our own. We
can only hope that all of these so called leaders get together and at least
demand just one issue rather than falling trap to the cunning strategy being
employed against us.
If this is not a
circus- then what is?
Let the clowns
not turn the palace of the Queen into a circus.
(The author is a
well known writer and journalist from Kalimpong. Views are personal)
